| Summary: | Various process-based models are extensively being used to analyze and forecast catchment hydrology and water quality. However, it is always important to select the appropriate hydrological and water quality modeling tools to predict and analyze the watershed and also consider their strengths and weaknesses. Different factors such as data availability, hydrological, hydraulic, and water quality processes and their desired level of complexity are crucial for selecting a plausible modeling tool. This review is focused on suitable model selection with a focus on desired hydrological, hydraulic and water quality processes (nitrogen fate and transport in surface, subsurface and groundwater bodies) by keeping in view the typical lowland catchments with intensive agricultural land use, higher groundwater tables, and decreased retention times due to the provision of artificial drainage. In this study, four different physically based, partially and fully distributed integrated water modeling tools, SWAT (soil and water assessment tool), SWIM (soil and water integrated model), HSPF (hydrological simulation program– FORTRAN) and a combination of tools from DHI (MIKE SHE coupled with MIKE 11 and ECO Lab), have been reviewed particularly for the Tollense River catchment located in North-eastern Germany. DHI combined tools and SWAT were more suitable for simulating the desired hydrological processes, but in the case of river hydraulics and water quality, the DHI family of tools has an edge due to their integrated coupling between MIKE SHE, MIKE 11 and ECO Lab. In case of SWAT, it needs to be coupled with another tool to model the hydraulics in the Tollense River as SWAT does not include backwater effects and provision of control structures. However, both SWAT and DHI tools are more data demanding in comparison to SWIM and HSPF. For studying nitrogen fate and transport in unsaturated, saturated, and river zone, HSPF was a better model to simulate the desired nitrogen transformation and transport processes. However, for nitrogen dynamics and transformations in shallow streams, ECO Lab had an edge due its flexibility for inclusion of user-desired water quality parameters and processes. In the case of SWIM, most of the input data and governing equations are similar to SWAT but it does not include water bodies (ponds and lakes), wetlands and drainage systems. In this review, only the processes that were needed to simulate the Tollense River catchment were considered, however the resulted model selection criteria can be generalized to other lowland catchments in Australia, North-western Europe and North America with similar complexity.
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